I've done a really basic mockup at [1] - I'm not much of a graphics artist, but hopefully it'll get the concept across.
The use case I see for this feature is basically the same use case that the regular launcher-progressbar fills. When you have an application that's doing something, it's nice to be able to see that at a glance, without opening up the full interface. Whether the action has a calculable amount complete or not is really irrelevant to the use case. It's probably also worth noting that Windows 7 does something similar - when an application is doing an action with a normal progress bar, its tile fills with green. When the progress is indeterminate, its tile sort of strobes green - it's a bit of an odd effect, but it fulfills the use case I mentioned above. Evan [1] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/171647/Unity_Launcher_Busy_Mockup.png On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:04 AM, Mark Shuttleworth <m...@ubuntu.com> wrote: > > It might be worth exploring the use of a spinny in the space we place > numbers, but not a progress bar. Mockups welcome. > > > On 28/02/12 05:59, Ian Santopietro wrote: > > In cases where there is no determined percentage or time remaining, I > don't feel it would be appropriate to show a progress bar there at all. > Indeterminate progress bars are great for a particular window for > indicating that _something_ is happening, but I don't think this behavior > is appropriate for the launcher. > On Feb 27, 2012 8:12 PM, "Evan Huus" <eapa...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> At the moment, the Unity Launcher supports displaying the progress of an >> application as part of its launcher tile. This is good. >> >> Some tasks in some applications, however, do not have an easily >> calculated percentage completion, and so use an 'indeterminate progress >> bar'. A good example of this is when checking for new updates in Update >> Manager. The progress bar bounces back and forth, rather than filling from >> start to finish. >> >> Problem: The Unity launcher has no support for displaying this type of >> status on a launcher tile. >> >> I think it would be useful if applications could indicate to Unity that >> they were performing an indeterminate-progress action, and that Unity would >> then indicate this on the launcher tile somehow. I think a spinner would be >> better than the bouncing-progress-bar because of the amount of detail >> available in a small launcher tile, but that's obviously debatable. >> >> Thoughts? UI-Freeze is past for Precise already, but this seems like it >> would be relatively simple (basically just 'start' and 'stop' API calls and >> the actual rendering)... >> >> Evan >> >> -- >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~unity-design >> Post to : unity-design@lists.launchpad.net >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~unity-design >> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >> >> > > >
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